


little fires do not weep

by lumailia



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, and soft, just some fun sad stuff, mention of renora, mention of rosegarden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 01:32:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17499110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumailia/pseuds/lumailia
Summary: Five years after the war ends, Yang visits her mother's grave.*cross-posted from my tumblr





	little fires do not weep

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the fic I wrote for @greekfiires birthday!! It's on tumblr too, which I now have (it's lumailia like on here but I follow from iliasyangs) if you wanna give it a like or reblog, too! Just keep in mind this is the typo-corrected version.

+

            Yang leaves home in the early hours of the morning, when the sky turns the same deep blue as the jewels on her wedding band and the world seems to be holding its breath. She hasn’t told anyone she was going out—it wasn’t necessary. Tai was still asleep, and if Weiss wakes up, rolls over and finds only a ghost of Yang’s warmth in the blankets, Yang is certain she’ll know why.

            It’s been over five years since the war ended. Which makes seven, to the date, since Raven died.

            Her younger self would tell her not to mourn. Raven wasn’t the only one she lost to this war. Summer was first. Then Pyrrha. Maria. Qrow. The memory of her Uncle’s sacrifice still causes a physical sting, as if there are hairline tears in her heart. But Raven haunts her. This power that’s wrung its way through her veins, this legacy of light and fear, is colored in her mother’s aura. In a way, it is the closest they’ve ever been.

            She loved her by the end. During the Battle of Shade, Raven fought at her side instead of against her. She watched her back while her teammates were scattered. She took a hit for her. She said, “I’m proud of you,” with a look in her eye that let Yang see everything that Summer had, that red could stand for hope instead of anger.  

            Then Cinder’s blade entered Raven’s heart, and hope went cold.

            In Raven’s final minutes, just before the flames in her eyes were reborn in her daughter’s, she held Yang’s cheek and told her not to cry. “Little fires do not weep,” she said. “They burn.”

            Those were her last words. Yang still isn’t sure where they came from, if they were an old tribe saying or something more personal, but she doesn’t feel any need to puzzle it out. On her last breath, her mother had told her to be strong. To accept what was coming.

            Who else would be in Raven’s final thoughts but the child—now a woman, brilliant and volatile as the sun—who held her as she died?

            As Yang reaches the base of the cliff, the sun starts its rise, making a backdrop of orange and violet for the trees’ spiderweb silhouettes. For the longest time, there was only one headstone at the top of this cliff, engraved with a shattered rose and the words, _Thus Kindly I Scatter._ Now, there are three, with Qrow and Raven’s stones a small way’s down from Summer’s. As if even in death, the twins are devoted to her.

            At least, that’s what Yang wants to believe.

            Yang kneels at Raven’s headstone and wipes the frost from the lacquered surface. Snow still sticks in the engravings, turning them stark white against silver stone. Her mother’s gear-and-feather symbol, a near match to her Uncle’s, seems to peer out at her. Yang pads her gloved fingers over the words inscribed beneath it. _My Hopes Have Flown Before._

The wind feathers against her back, and it feels like the brush of a hand.

“It’s been seven years,” Yang starts, though the words are gluey in her throat. “The further we get, the more different I feel. I should’ve figured out by now that’s just how things go.”

            She takes a long, shuddering breath and watches the clouds that gather on the exhale. “Ruby got married this past summer. You remember Oscar—you called him a ‘runt’ that time? Yeah, he shot up like a tree, and now he and Ruby are running all over Remnant on what’s got to be the world’s longest honeymoon. That is, if you count picking off the last of the Grimm as honeymooning. And me and Weiss are good, if you were wondering. Still living with Dad, making sure he’s not too lonely. Crazy how we’re all grown up now, huh? Crazier to think about everything we faced when we were younger. It really puts things into perspective when you can’t find the right brand of sauce at the grocery store.

            “I don’t know why I’m laughing so much, Mom. Maybe that’s a distance thing, too. I wish you were here. Dad wishes you were here, too. There was a night, early in the fall, when Ren and Nora were visiting with their kids, and Weiss and I were chasing them around the yard, and I looked up and saw Dad on the porch. He was watching us, kind of smiling, and then he looked to his side, and I knew he was hoping he’d see you. I don’t know—maybe he did. You and Qrow had better be taking care of Summer in the afterlife, though, or there’s going to be hell to pay when Dad gets there.”

            Yang lifts her fingers from the headstone, and snow runs out of the engravings like tears. “Can I tell you a secret?” she asks. She pauses, hoping wistfully for an answer, but there is only the wind, sighing its condolences.  

            “Weiss is going to have a girl,” Yang blurts. “Dad doesn’t know yet, but he’s going to be so excited. I think, all of us—we taught him how to live again. I know you would’ve wanted that. You only broke us because you thought it was your only choice.

            “This is going to sound foolish, and if you were alive and here, I know you’d probably yell at me for being so naïve, but…I think we’re safe now. Me, Weiss, our maiden powers. Ironwood’s teams developed a way to get rid of them, if we wanted. Transfer them to more willing candidates. But there’s no need for this cycle to keep going. Salem and Oz are free. The war is over. There’s a good chance this magic might die with me. Until then, in case danger might arise, I’ll be sure to guard it close.

            “I tell you this every year, but I hope you know that it wasn’t in vain. You, and Summer, and Qrow—your sacrifices did mean something. When I say the world is getting different every day, I mean it’s getting better. And you helped us. It took you the longest, but it helped.”

            She presses a kiss to her fingers and brands it to the stone. “Rest easy, Mom,” she says, and a sudden pain in her jaw warns her of coming tears. “I love you.”

            “Yang?”

            Yang rises, turns over her shoulder. Weiss is halfway up the cliffside, steam billowing from a thermos of coffee in her right hand. In her left, there’s a bouquet of bright yellow lilies, bunched between straining fingers. Yang runs to her, spraying diamond fractals of snow in her wake.

            “Hey, Weiss,” she says as she slows. “You didn’t have to come out here.”

            “I wanted to,” Weiss responds, handing her the coffee. Against the metal shell of the thermos, Yang’s flesh hand quivers. “This is for you.”

            Yang nods to the lilies. “And those are for her?”

            A smile breaks across Weiss’s cold-ruddy cheeks. “How did you guess?”

            “Those aren’t the flowers from the vase on the coffee table, are they?” Yang asks, lifting an eyebrow.

            “Well, I thought we could always go the store after this, get a replacement bouquet? We’re out of bread, anyway.”

            Yang lets herself laugh at that, and it loosens some of the tightness in her chest. “It’s thoughtful,” she says. She leaves a peck on Weiss’s cheek, just at the fading slash of her scar. “Thank you.”

            “You know what I always say.”

            “You’re here for me?”

            “I’m here for you.”

            Matching Weiss’s smile, Yang takes her open hand and leads her up to Raven’s headstone. While Yang Weiss sets the lilies on the half-melted snow, Yang stares into the inscription, reading the words on a loop in her Raven’s voice.

            “Do you know where they’ve flown?” Yang asks, half to Weiss, half to the grave at their feet.

            Weiss stands and loops an arm through Yang’s. “What do you mean?”

            “The grave says, ‘my hopes have flown before.’ What does that mean? Where did they go? Not that I ever really got to know what she hoped for, deep down, but my dad chose this quote for her for a reason.”

            “Raven’s thing was survival, right?” Weiss asks.

            Yang nods, feeling her throat cinch and another wave of pain score her jaw. “She wanted to live. Qrow never told me much, but they had a rough childhood. She wanted peace from that, I think—but that peace, according to her, could only be earned through strength.”

            “Then I think you know exactly where her hopes have flown.”

            Yang turns to Weiss, her anchor, her shared soul, and finds her face lit with crinkled eyes and a close-lipped smile. It’s enough to bring those resistant tears to her eyes, and Yang is unafraid to let them fall, tracking burning lines down her frost-stung cheeks.

            Together, they turn back to Raven’s grave. The sun peeks above the horizon, and radiance breaks over the world. Snow crystals catch every orange and pink of the brightening sunrise, giving the earth the appearance of ice set ablaze. Someone once said that even after the gods abandoned it, Remnant still held onto its miracles, and Yang understands she’s seeing one now. With the war they’ve fought, the sun rising in itself is an outcome of anomaly, a slim bright chance to cut the dark.

            Unfortunately, she gets only a moment to admire the beauty of the dawn before more tears come, and everything distorts to a rainbow blur.  

            Weiss’s hand stretches over her back, holding her steady as her cries move through her body, as they shake down her shoulders and stretch apart her throat. A strange warmth carries on the wind that buffets her open side, and the surprise of it makes Yang blink. The motion clears her eyes—just in time for her to see a single, black feather pass before her face. It is a message. A confirmation.

            Little fires do not weep—but tired heroes do.


End file.
